Cool Hand (13 page)

Closer, I could see blood on Felix’s muzzle.

And there were only two of the Boneheads.

Felix stopped beside me. I’d never felt the full force of his alpha dominance; he’d obviously had a way of toning it down. And suddenly he wasn’t. My legs simply gave way, and I was kneeling on the grass.

Even Silas and Ursula lowered their bodies as they ghosted past, heading for the ranch house.

The Boneheads slunk down the hill like beaten curs. Felix didn’t snarl. He barely looked at them, but their bellies were dragging on the ground. It was difficult to tell, but my guess was they were the ringleader and the third guy, the one Olivia had hit over the head.

So what did that mean for Bone Two, the gangly guy I’d been fighting with?

Duane followed them down to their truck, where he watched them change to human. They were still getting hurriedly dressed as they climbed in and drove off.

I took a breath and looked around, my head instinctively ducking.

Felix had changed back to human too.

He didn’t seem to care, but I kept my gaze on the ground.

“Give me a couple of minutes,” he said softly, folding the alpha presence away. “I’ll see you in my den.”

Martha patted my shoulder and we walked slowly and silently down to the house.

The long, low building blended in with the landscape, which was only right. It was made from the hill: red clay fired to make the tiles, timber from the flanks of the hill and stone from its deep bones. It belonged. A peacefulness drifted up from it, like smoke from a chimney, and completely at odds with what seemed to have happened on the high slopes above it.

Ursula and Silas were in the kitchen already, dressed but not talking, staring into the distance.

Martha had a pot of coffee brewing. With the couple of minutes requested well past, I filled two of the handmade mugs and followed her directions to Felix’s den.

Even with his dominance pulled back, Felix seemed to take up a lot of space in the little room. He’d changed into black denim, a blue T and plain cowboy boots. He’d cleaned the blood from his face and was combing his hair back with his fingers. He just looked tired now, relaxed in his big leather recliner. He motioned me to an easy chair facing him.

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

“Lance Evans,” he said. “The ringleader, the idiot who owns the truck, decided he didn’t like being knocked around. Worked himself up and was trying to get some of the others worked up as well.”

“
He
didn’t like being knocked around? What did he claim he was trying to do to Olivia? Talk to her? With his fists?”

Felix just waited for me to get myself back under control before he went on.

“In a way, he’s lucky. If you hadn’t stopped it, Ricky would have come back and killed all three of them, and I would have backed him.” He sipped his coffee. “As it happened, Silas and Ursula stepped in, brought them out here. I still might have been able to keep it low level, but Evans started arguing. Then he brought up Gray.”

Felix stared at me. “You’re so new to this, I can’t really expect you to understand all the complexities.”

“Lay them out Felix, or we’ll never get anywhere.”

“By submitting to me, you and Alexander have actually strengthened my position as alpha.”

“And that was what you were trying to work us all towards,” I said, “rather than a challenge.”

Which Alex and I might have lost, given the wounds he’d received from Noble, and my lack of experience in fighting four-legged.

Felix nodded, giving no indication of his thoughts on the challenge. “While the pack is healthy and happy, I’m probably as firmly in control as it’s possible to be. The trouble is that we’re not animals. Every member of the pack knows we’re under threat from the Confederation. Everyone knows we’re losing too many who can’t change. As individuals, they’d probably just let me handle things. As wolves, they’d trust their instincts. But the real curse of the werewolf is they’re human as well. Humans have doubts and the Call lets them feel that doubt in the minds of their fellows. Doubt feeds on itself. What if we went with the Confederation, would it be that bad? What if we’re doing something wrong for new members that’s causing the problems? That’s the kind of thinking humans always engage in.”

He’d leaned forward as he spoke. Now his chair creaked as he sat back in it.

“I can handle the Confederation. I can handle the loss of new members. I think I might be able to handle having an associated pack in the territory. But it doesn’t stop there; the load keeps growing. This associated pack includes Athanate and humans, and that’s bad enough. But by now every pack member knows that this associated pack has a skinwalker.”

“Can I ask, Alpha, what the problem is with other Were? I mean, those who aren’t wolves?” I tried for humble, and I think it almost amused Felix. He didn’t bite my head off, anyway.

“Other Were...” Felix stared into his mug. “I guess other Were don’t like the pack dynamics. They feel it’s claustrophobic. But we don’t have a problem with them, they just don’t mix with us. They keep to their own kind. Skinwalkers, now, they don’t belong anywhere. They can’t be trusted. They don’t mix with their own, and they don’t mix with us, unless they want to use us as cover.”

“Like Noble.” I wasn’t sure that was fair on skinwalkers, to use Noble as an example, but I could see how the Denver pack would have him in mind.

“Like him. I’m not saying Gray’s that bad, but if he really is part of your House and that makes him part of your pack, well, we have a problem.”

Felix paused. I waited him out. I was getting a feel for the way he built a case, and I was sure there was more where this had come from. I was right.

“That’s before we get to the part where Evans started spouting off about the stink of Basilikos all over Gray.”

Shit. Just what Naryn had warned me about.

I forced my attention back to the here and now. Felix could tell that I knew about the Basilikos smell. His eyes narrowed.

“I’ll explain,” I said, “but first, I have a question. There were three of the Boneheads. Wasn’t Evans one of the ones I saw crawling off? What happened to the big gangly guy?”

“I killed him.”

Felix’s face was empty of emotion, but I could feel anger and sorrow behind that mask.

“His name was Peter Young, and he was the only one I thought was worth spit in that group. But Evans had him wound up till he couldn’t think straight. He refused to back down. Refused to back down from me! In the end, all I could do was make an example of him.”

Felix put the mug down and walked over to his sideboard. He poured bourbon into a couple of tumblers and brought them back.

Not my drink and too early in the day, but I wasn’t going to refuse the alpha.

“The other two?”

“I’ve exiled them. There’s shame in that. In some ways exile is worse than fighting your own alpha. Silas and Ursula will tell the pack what’s happened, and the best I can hope for is the shock will bring them all back into line for a while.”

“Where will they go? The exiles.” I was stalling and he knew it, but he answered me.

“If they had a lick of sense, they’d head for Cimarron or Glen Canyon. Sound alphas that might take them in. But Evans will head south and end up with Ute Mountain or Gold Hill.”

Both those names were just across the border into New Mexico, which pricked my interest.

“What’s wrong with those packs?”

“New Mexico outcasts,” he said. “When I say outcasts, it means the psycho head cases running the main New Mexico packs don’t want them, and that tells me they’re seriously bad. If they were in Colorado, I’d have to deal with them.”

He meant kill them, as a pack would do with a rogue on its territory. He didn’t seem to hold the rest of the New Mexico packs in much higher regard.

“New Mexico Were are a problem?”

He just nodded.

“Altau have a couple of messages for you,” I said. “One about New Mexico: Iversen has been seen heading down there.”

He nodded again. He’d been expecting that.

“Naryn also wants me to say that Altau can’t spare the resources for a fight against the Confederation at the moment. He advises to make a deal with them and then use Altau as a balance to keep them in line.”

Felix snorted.

He wasn’t going to be distracted anymore. “What I expected,” he said. “Now, about that Basilikos marque.”

I sipped the bourbon. The whiskey was hot orange in color, but underneath the bite, the taste was almost sweet, with caramel and toffee. And the smell: a little like new leather. Maybe I should be more adventurous in my liquors now that my senses had been sharpened.

“So. Basilikos,” I said. “We’d never have found out where Matlal were holding their toru without inside information.”

Felix would know all about Bow Creek—some of the pack were out there now getting rid of the evidence.

“Gray found one of the Matlal willing to help. It turns out she’s not Basilikos.”

Felix frowned. “Then what the hell is she?”

“A former spy for the Carpathians.”

I’d managed to shock him. There wasn’t going to be a better time. I bowed my head in sort-of wolf submission.

“The price for her help was accepting her into House Farrell.”

He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning his head back on his seat.

The situation wasn’t getting any better. I thought I’d better go for broke.

“I’m in trouble,” I said, and he grunted without humor. I let it all blurt out. “I haven’t had time to learn everything about the Were and Athanate. That means I have to rely on my instincts. They’re normally good, but not for paranormal stuff. Even if they were, I’m not sure there are any right instincts for what I am. When I go to my wolf, and Alex is there, everything’s under control, but that’s not helping my Athanate. The wolf and the Athanate are fighting each other. That sends the Athanate too close to rogue. Skylur’s not around, and the one person left who I think can really help me is Diana, but she’s gone missing down in New Mexico. I need to go find her, but Naryn told me not to go and sent me to you instead to control me through the wolf. I can’t do that. I need you to cover for me while I get Diana back from New Mexico—”

“No!” His head snapped back upright, and all that carefully-packed-away dominance came leaping out. I was suddenly down on the floor, on my knees and shaking like an aspen leaf.

“No, no, no!”

He stood up abruptly to pace, and the den seemed to shrink even more around me. All I could see were his boots in front of me. I couldn’t raise my head,
physically
couldn’t raise it. My whole claustrophobic world had narrowed down even further: two steps to the left, two steps to the right. Sealed pinewood floor. Plain brown boots. I realized, belatedly, that my reaction up at the cemetery hadn’t just been because Felix had let his dominance out in full force. Alex and me submitting to him in the barn hadn’t been just an act. Handing over dominance was a real, physical process, the same for the Were and the Athanate. I’d handed my puppet strings to Felix and he was jerking them now.

Dammit, I hadn’t signed up for this.

The anger helped clear my mind. I
could
lift my head.

I ignored the trembling, the feeling in my throat that I wanted to whine, the stomach-turning desire to do anything to stop him from being angry with me.

I got one foot underneath me and started to rise, wobbling with effort.

Hands gripped my arms and lifted me. I panicked. But all he did was place me back in my chair, gently as a precious vase. The feeling of being crushed loosened a little.

Alex had told me how some alphas behaved—the sexual domination over all the female wolves that they enjoyed. He’d said Felix was different.

Is he?

“I apologize.” His voice was even gruffer than usual. “You caught me off guard there.”

His hand tilted my chin up, making me look at him again.

My eyes didn’t burn out.

He looked even more tired—as tired as I felt. The dominance wasn’t entirely gone, but it wasn’t suffocating like it had been.

“It’s not just you and your damned knot of problems. It’s that arrogant, scheming bastard at Haven. I know all about Naryn from when he was Diakon before. I can smell his devious hands all over this.”

“I…” my voice wouldn’t cooperate. Felix picked my tumbler up off the floor and refilled it, giving me time to gather myself again.

“He knows you’ll try and work around his orders. So he’s using me to reinforce them. He’s right; the bastard knows there’s no way I can let you go to New Mexico. The packs there are
not
welcoming. You’d be dead in a day, if the Basilikos didn’t get you first.”

He took a swallow of his bourbon before continuing, his voice bitter.

“On top of that, he’s offloaded the problem he can’t deal with. He has no idea what to do about your crusis, so he throws the problem at me. If I succeed in keeping you sane, he’ll say it was his idea. If I fail, well, what can you expect from an animal.”

Anger let the dominance seep out again. I stiffened. I would not cringe.

“I won’t try and avoid the responsibility for you, but I’m not going to have you sitting at Coykuti. That’s only going to cause resentment in the pack. I need something for you to do.”

He went back to pacing, a subliminal growl making the air throb in the den.

“You’re looking to prove that the Adepts have some kind of ritual that would help a Were change. Noble certainly found some rituals that affected the way he changed.” When he said that name, the anger in his voice was like blades running down my flesh.

“Go to the Adepts. You have better contacts with them than any of the pack or Altau. Find out what you can about rituals.” He paused, brooding. “You know Olivia’s likely to be next?”

I nodded. The grip on my tumbler helped hide the tremors in my hand, and I raised it for a sip, concentrating on the fiery taste and not how Felix’s eyes seemed to stab into my head.

“If you can do something for her…” he murmured, looking away thoughtfully. “
If
you can, that might change the balance. It
might
. You’d still need to get rid of Gray and this Basilikos-Carpathian spy.”

“I can’t.” The demon in my throat slipped that out while I was distracted. I tried to explain. “I can’t send them away without cause. Athanate law. I’ve accepted them into my House.”

“Renounce the Athanate—”

“I can’t do that any more than you can decide not to be Were.”

“Maybe leaving Denver is the only way, then.”

His power built up again and flowed over me. I could barely keep my head up. It was a victory to stay sitting in the chair.

“I can’t abandon Olivia either,” I said, forcing each word out. “Or Alex.”

“Or Ursula?”

“No,” I whispered.